There seems to be an unwritten rule among Brazilian musicians at the moment, that staging and showmanship need to be larger than the music. Marisa Monte has pushed the boat out. The set for her sell-out show was so extravagantly camp that it would have upstaged her had she not outmanoeuvred it with her charisma, panache and musicianship.

Large gauzes, stretched across and anchored to the stage, loomed like huge splodges of chewing gum, but served as projection screens for moving image projections. Video pictures swirled across them as Monte, wrapped in a black gothic dress with huge red roses stitched to her breast and crowned with an outsize and even blacker wig piece, sashayed onto the stage to Serge Gainsbourg's Je T'aime.

Monte, an energetic yet sensitive singer, has been f ted outside of Brazil and embraced by some of the New York art musician set. She has also worked with the Brazilian greats, including Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso.

She has a fantastic voice. She struck up her nine-piece band - which included a four-strong percussion team that confidently rippled complex rhythms across the stage - to open the show with Amor I Love You, the first track on her most recent album, Memories Chronicles and Declarations of Love.

The album formed the backbone of the performance, which seemed to prove another rule - that given some electric guitars and the chance to rock out, a Brazilian band simply can't resist. The results can be fatal.

Her voice is so dynamic and expressive that it can handle almost any material and her new songs gave her the chance to strap on a guitar herself.